From Abracadabra to Zombies

What's the harm?

These links and comments illustrate the harm
done by occult, paranormal, pseudoscientific, and supernatural
beliefs. The harm may be tangible and easily documented:
physical, financial, or interpersonal.
»What's the Harm? archives

December 19, 2008. In northern California, a psychic was
arrested on a $500,000 warrant for financial elder abuse. Janet
Adams appeared in San Mateo Superior Court today on a felony count
of financial elder abuse
for defrauding an 85-year-old woman of $93,000. Adams
convinced the woman she had psychic powers and that she had to pay
her to keep bad things from happening. Adams used the same technique
in 2003 when she was convicted of defrauding a businesswoman of
$90,000 and got a suspended sentence of nine months. While on
probation, she convinced a 19-year-old woman to give her more than
$14,000 to avoid harm coming to her family, which was a violation of
her probation. Adams spent two years at the women's state prison in
Chowchilla as a result.

update:
March 6. Janet Adams was
sentenced today to six years in prison.

Fortune tellers bilking people
of their fortunes is becoming too commonplace to deserve continued
representation on these pages. Here are links to the last such cases
I will cover:

Gina Reed, 35, of Arlington Heights was arrested by Chicago
police Wednesday on a count of felony theft by deception. She is
accused of posing as a psychic reader, allegedly telling her
clients she could reverse the troubles in their lives by
blessing their money.

December 19, 2008.
Thousands of Congolese children have been abandoned, after being
abused in exorcism rituals that used to be sanctioned by tribal
traditions but are now controlled by churches. According to
one report:

“Fifty percent of Congo’s children begging on
the streets have been abandoned and tortured as child sorcerers.
The snowballing of the issue is frightening. Before it was the
‘wise men’ of the village, and now it is the church that is
misusing its authority. Whenever someone comes with a problem the
pastor cannot solve, the solution is to blame a child and purge
the family of the problem.”

According to the Special Rapporteur on the DRC’s
human rights, Julia Motoc, some 25,000 to 50,000 child refugees,
war orphans and “child sorcerers” are roaming the streets of the
Congo’s cities. “The child sorcerers are accused of having
mystical powers and are abandoned by their families, sometimes
because of financial difficulties. The revivalist churches have
been maintaining this belief, which is harmful to children.”

December 11, 2008. I've heard psychics say that it runs in
the family. Sylvia Browne,
for example, has a son who runs the same kind of psychic scam she
does.Last year I wrote about Lola
Miller's arrest for running a
cleansing scam as
part of her "psychic" business. (The Brownes don't do cleansing
rituals, as far as I know. Their specialty is getting messages from
the dead.) Lola Miller is to be sentenced in January 2009, after
pleading guilty last August to two counts of grand theft. Her victim
has since died of cancer. The victim's widower has said he will
contribute any restitution he receives to cancer research. Good luck
to him. The month after her mother-in-law pleaded guilty to grand
theft,
Lisa
Miller pleaded no contest to one count of theft by false pretense.
She was sentenced to two months in jail and five years of probation.
The judge also ordered her to pay full restitution, of which she has
already paid $61,000, authorities said. Lisa Miller was also barred
"from ever again engaging in fortune telling, psychic readings,
tarot card readings, love spell castings, palm readings and
spiritual advising."

If two psychics in a family is good, three must be
better, right? Another daughter-in-law of Lola Miller, Danielle
Miller, 23, also faces criminal charges for allegedly bilking
$36,000 from a woman to cleanse her of evil.

I think we all know who needs to be cleansed of evil
and it's not the victims of this team of psychics.

November 19, 2008. Christian preachers, or so they call
themselves, are branding children as witches In some of the poorest
parts of Nigeria, where evangelical religious fervor forms a deadly
combination with belief in sorcery and black magic. Thousands of
children have been blamed for catastrophes, deaths, and famine. The
children "are then abandoned, tortured, starved and murdered...."
Some are made to undergo exorcisms.

"Exorcism is big business. Preachers can charge as
much as a year's salary for an average Nigerian to treat children."*
A 29-year-old Englishman, Gary Foxcroft, is the director of the UK
charity Stepping
Stones Nigeria, which is trying to do something about the
treatment of children in Nigeria. He says: "It's an absolute
scandal. Any Christian would look at the situation that is going on
here and just be absolutely outraged that they were using the
teachings of Jesus Christ to exploit and abuse innocent children."

update:
December 4, 2008. "Bishop" Sunday Ulup-Aya was arrested and
charged with murder after a child rights campaigner led police to
his church and negotiated a consultation fee for an exorcism. Five
others have been arrested and the state government says more arrests
are planned.

update:
February 16, 2009. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ojo Madueke,
claims that the "children were paid to say they were tortured."
Chijoke Odum, chairperson of a civil liberties organization in
Nigeria, replied bluntly: "The minister told a lie."

update:
May 20, 2009. In a special edition of ABC News "Nightline,"
Dan Harris documents a new and growing phenomenon in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, where children are accused of witchcraft by
Evangelical pastors and subjected to abusive "exorcisms" held at
churches throughout the Congolese capital. "Child Witches: Accused
in the Name of Jesus" will air Thursday, May 21, 2009.

About harm

It is difficult to assess the harm done to society and the
world at large by the spread and encouragement of
anti-scientific, irrational, and magical thinking. It is also
difficult to measure the extent of harm done to individuals
and their families who give up thinking for themselves to
follow some guru astrologer, psychic, or cult leader.

It is
impossible to calculate the losses to those bilked because
they are ignorant of basic logical and psychological
principles. Even so,
Tim Farley gives it his best shot.